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The New Batman Adventures Robin (Batman:TAS) Tim Drake as Robin first appears in the premier episode of The New Batman Adventures. Otherwise known as Gotham Knights, "Holiday Knights". The following episode, "Sins of the Father", reveals that Tim was a street kid whose father was a criminal who betrayed Two-Face and was ultimately killed. Feeling he needed to help, Tim stole the Robin suit and helped Batman take down Two-Face. Tim's background was almost identical to Jason Todd’s, who was the second Robin in comic books, but was not used in the series. In the episode "Growing Pains", Tim’s impulsive behavior and anger leads him to disobeying Batman and becomes inches away from destroying Clayface, which origin is more along the lines of Jason Todd. He was voiced by Mathew Valencia in the series. Robin’s costume in this series is very similar to Tim’s second costume in the comics. What people think of Tim An interview with then Batman editor Danny O’Neil from an article from Comics Scene Magazine #17 1991 As Tim Drake has discovered, enthusiasm and a flimsy, garish outfit aren't enough to transform an energetic child into a suitable squire for the Dark Knight. But given the ever-increasing viciousness of Gotham's criminals, to say nothing of the still-fresh memory of Jason Todd's death, it isn't surprising that Batman plans not to repeat past mistakes. Instead, he prefers that others provide the newest Robin with a more effective costume and more thorough training.Designed by Neal Adams, who had earlier created the outfit the Dick Grayson of Earth-2 ultimately wore, Tim Drake's uniform features a camouflage-oriented cloak, a Kevlar vest and an assortment of compartments filled with weapons, food and electronic hardware. But while it's certainly now geared towards keeping its wearer alive, there was a more basic reason for deviating from the brightly-hued suit worn by Robins past, according to Denny O'Neil, editor of the Batman titles. "It was a very dated costume" he explains. "We thought we could make it a little more modern, a little classier maybe, a little more appropriate to a teenager than to a little kid. Also, we did want an excuse to put the hi-tech stuff in. This is the age of computers, after all."One of the problems with the old costume was that it wasn't really very practical for a dark, night character. One of Neal's inspirations was the reversible cape so you preserve the bright Robin motif, and yet, there's a certain logic to being able to cover up. And hell, school kids wear bulletproof vests these days. It seems to me that if I were in any kind of crime-fighting business, I would certainly want to do that. As for computer links, I really don't know what they are, but Elliot Brown, who did the technology part of this, assures us that they would work. I'm perfectly willing to take his word for it. "The new Robin costume will soon be seen on action figures, lunch boxes and other products in stores across the country as well as, DC hopes, on movie screens in Batman II. After all, with all its protective gear and built-in equipment, this battle-ready Robin appears to have taken his cue from the film's heavily armored Batman. "I don't know if it costume was influenced the movie's," says O'Neil, "but that probably played some part in the designer's thinking. We got about 15 different designs, and we, I swear, Scout's honor, liked this one the best. We sent them out to director Tim Burton, and this was the one he liked best. So, it was a real consensus that this is the one we ought to go with. Some of the others were interesting, but we wanted to preserve the traditional Robin look and yet update it." However, a reputation built up by others over a half-century was not something Tim Drake needed to inherit and so, given the task of furthering the latest Robin's training, writer Chuck Dixon, along with penciler Tom Lyle and inker Bob Smith, devised a five-issue "Trial" to make a man out of the Boy Wonder. "No matter who Robin is, he's generally considered just a sidekick," Dixon reasons, "and I thought it would be challenging to deal with a sidekick as a primary character in a mini-series. And everybody seemed to have disliked Robin II so much that it was also a challenge to make a Robin people would like. Alan Grant had laid some great groundwork in Detective for Tim Drake to be a really neat character, and as I talked to Denny O'Neil and Dan Raspier, I got even more interested in the direction they wanted the mini-series to take, a coming-of-age story with lots of fistfights. "Tim Drake has a lot, of self-doubt whether or not he can fill Robin's shoes, whether he could be a competent sidekick for Batman. "He's not overconfident, which was obviously the problem with the previous Robin. He's not full of the wisecracks, although a transformation comes over him when he puts the costume on. He's pretty much a loner, which makes him match up with Batman. I always said Dick Grayson was much more sociable than Tim Drake. I mean, Dick Grayson, as they put him in college, was kind of hip. I don't think Tim Drake will ever be kind of hip. He's brainy, into computers, into books. He's like a really super-athletic nerd in many ways. And just as his mentor once set off around the globe to complete his crime-fighting education, so too does the young hero take his leave of the United States to add to his own. "It was John Lennon who said, 'Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans,' " Dixon recalls. "Robin plans to go to Paris to hone his martial arts skill and gain some confidence. And he never gets there. He begins to learn with the old master, that doesn't work out, and he immediately finds himself involved in a world-spanning conspiracy run by a knighted English nobleman who's also King Snake, dreaded Asian underworld figure. He becomes involved with a renegade Drug Enforcement Agency agent and Lady Shiva, and the three of them travel from France to Hong Kong, battling the King Snake and his hench-person Lynx, who I hope will be Robin's female nemesis, his Catwoman, along the way." In the end, though, it matters little whether Tim Drake will be able to capture King Snake. It is the wandering attentions of readers he will have to arrest, and to Batman fans who've long taken his role for granted, he will need to prove that he is capable of supporting both his own title for a brief time and their interest over what DC would like to be many long years. "I really think he can," says Chuck Dixon. "Robin had a run in Star-Spangled Comics back in the early '50s, and they were some really good stories, better than the Batman stories at the time. Robin as a character, and this Robin in particular, I think he's strong enough. Readers will get a kick out of him. He's no Hardy Boy." "We tried to build Tim Drake carefully from the ground up to make him likable and, within the confines of our art form, believable. We have a gut feeling that you get when you've been doing it for 25 years that he will be popular and that we'll probably do other mini-series," remarks Denny ONeil. "I think he'll certainly be more popular than Jason.